This week's Cloud Monday video is part 2 of playing #Matterfall, a #PS4 game from #Housemarque that came out in 2017. In the first video, https://youtu.be/rj3-onwTwrk, Matterfall did well being streamed from the #PlayStation Plus Premium Cloud Streaming Service. But we always play the games twice so we can get a better idea of the average streaming quality.
So in this part 2, it actually was a little worse being streamed from the cloud than in part 1. there wasn't nothing too serious, but there was some minor macro blocking, what appeared to be some bit-rate drops, and some stream tearing. whilst these were noticeable, none of these got in the way of my gameplay.
The thing that got in the way of the gameplay was the game itself. i stopped playing the game because i stopped having fun with it. there's no denying that the game is good to look at, but i found it not as great to play. It's a shame as the game is good to be streamed from the cloud because of how frequent the checkpoints are and that it doesn't mind if you die. So whilst i can recommend the game as one that's suitable to be played from the cloud, i don't think i can recommend the game as strongly as something that should be played.
For Switch Funday i went back to F-Zero 99. it had received two updates since i last played it. these updates added more content to the game like new tracks as well as some small tweaks.
The thing that surprised me the most is how much better everyone got at the game. in the first video, https://youtu.be/8aoxu1RiYEQ, from the launch weekend, there wasn't as much attacking as there was in this video. people also seemed more familiar with tracks, making fewer mistakes and using the super boost much more efficiently.
The new tracks that have been added to the game do, mostly, feel a little more difficult with tighter cornering and more corners. they are still visually cool to look at and the race to get on the track is still fun. but the track with the magnets at the edge, Port Town 2 i think, was not fun at all as i was constantly finding them and being damaged and slowed down.
But the biggest surprise was that after a month since release, it did feel like less people were playing F-Zero 99. I had seen this with other "99" games on the Switch like Pac-Man 99, but even Tetris 99 feels like there are plenty of people playing. trying out the Pro Race mode, it felt like 2/3 of the racers were A.I and about the same for the second Grand Prix i tried. Thankfully the F-Zero 99 game mode seemed mostly full of human racers. but it will be interesting to see if this continues to be popular and what Nintendo continues to add to the game. will they do paid DLC like Tetris 99 or will they continue to add content via patches in a similar way to their other big titles like Splatoon 3.
This month's #Splatoon3 #SalmonRun item is the Brinestone Jacket and like the other Salmon Run items, my goal is to get the item twice and pick the best of the two to keep. It took a long time to get the jacket twice. i had a few games where we couldn't even get past the first wave of enemies. there were two weird moments where in one game there were only 2 players and in another there was a big amount of slowdown that i don't remember experiencing in the game before. in the final job, my team and i did face off against the King Salmonoid but we were unable to defeat it.
For this week's Demo Play Thursday i played the #PlayStation4 version of Cross Tails. This DEMO, from developers Rideon, is also out on all current generation platforms and PC.
The reason why i chose to play this demo was because i was genuinely curious about the game. on the #PSN store, not much is mentioned about the story but the screenshots showed that when the characters are on screen, not their character art, they are surrounded by a thick black outline. but it didn't look quite like cell shading that i had seen in the past.
The most annoying and disappointing part of this demo is the tutorial. it's just text boxes and pictures. and lots of them. the demo does start by saying that there are some limitations to it, but i do think that this is how the retail version of the game treats it's tutorial. it's an old way of doing it and many games have found better ways to incorporate their tutorials into the story and/or gameplay. it's quite important to this game as this game does have some unique features.
the one i used the most in this demo was the auto function. i can set some tactics, but once i've put everyone on the field i can turn on auto and the game's battles will just play out them selves. it's a fun and accessible thing the game does, and when you couple that with the story of the game it lets the player chose to play it like a JRPG or like a Visual Novel. the only downside of the visual novel aspect is that i had to manually continue the conversations, unlike battle mode there's no auto function when characters are talking.
But the highlight was how the characters on the game world looked with their thick black lines and the character art. the art was great with a lot of detail and the black lines on their in-game models worked better than i imagined. it was easy to keep track of the characters in the game world and it just looked really cool.
But as a demo, it has such a disappointing tutorial. it's really bad and becomes a barrier to higher level play. i could understand how after playing this demo some people would be turned off and not want to buy the game. on the other hand tho, there are many good aspects of the demo like a decent story, intrigued, and the fact we only played the beginning of one of the two stories in the game. these are things that some people will find compelling and get the game afterwards. what ever your choice, just be aware that your save game will not be carried over to the retail version of the game.
Part 7 of playing Gunstar Heroes on PS3 is the final part of my playthrough of the game. in part 6, https://youtu.be/RKKnRQQN82A, i ended that video with a try at the final boss rush. in this video i completed that boss rush as well as the final boss battle.
i don't want to go into story spoilers here, you can choose whether or not to watch how the video ends. but what i will say is that i found the boss rush to be easier than some of the other parts of this play through. i was surprised that i managed to beat it, i think, on my third try. i was a little lucky that the game continued from the final boss and that it didn't send me back to the start of the boss rush.
at the end of the game, once it's all finished, i'm kinda left speechless. it's one of the hardest games i've ever completed. it's hard to say why i kept on going, i imagine there's a level of stubbornness behind it. Gunstar Heroes does have some good points, and from a technological standpoint it does some cool things. but it's difficulty is brutal and unbalanced. i can only recommend that if you're going to play Gunstar Heroes as part of the SEGA Vintage Collection on PlayStation 3 then set the difficult to the easiest.
Welcome to Puzzle & Dragons Tuesday! Sit back and either watch me play through, with no commentary, the cup or leave it running in the background as BGM!
I play and earn all the achievements from The Pixel Fenrir Cup Revival! (2023/10/9 9:00～2023/10/16 8:59 JST) in Puzzle & Dragons: Nintendo Switch Edition whilst using a GamePad and a docked Nintendo Switch.
This week is the Pixel Fenrir Cup Revival. i have played this cup before, https://youtu.be/69Tg4WuUNFI. Much like this video, back then when i played there weren't many other players playing.
This week was disappointing as i only played against 1 other human. the last couple of cups have had fewer opponents, but i wasn't expecting to do a cup where i only played against 1 other person. Plus, i only played against them in the first game. after that, each game was against the computer. It maybe that i'll have to retire this programming in the not to distant future and do something new on Tuesdays, or move this to #Kofi.
As for this cup, it wasn't too difficult. i knew i had to make "L" shaped matches and i needed to add light and/or dark combos to it for the big score. But honestly, this wasn't one of my better cups. i got to the boss a few times but never came close to defeating it. it felt like i was moving much slower than normal, or that setting things up was taking too much time.
This week's Cloud Monday video is part 1 of playing Matterfall, a PS4 game from Housemarque that came out in 2017. I wanted to see how this game would hold up being streamed from PlayStation Plus Premium Cloud Streaming as it has a lot of particles that, on services like YouTube, can appear to be blocky rather than the fine points of detail they are.
And for the most part, the PlayStation Plus Cloud Streaming Service was able to cope with the, at times excessive, amounts of particles on screen at a time. It wasn't perfect, but it was good enough that when the quality did drop and things got a bit blocky it wasn't too noticeable and not for very long.
The game has a mechanic that makes it a good choice to be streamed from the PlayStation Plus Premium Cloud Service. we know, and have seen, that the service will give you a 20 second warning when it'll kick you off. thankfully, Matterfall has, mostly regular, checkpoints. this means that you're either not too far from reaching one or haven't progressed far since your last one. because of this, i wasn't worried about loosing progress and felt relaxed continuing on.
Whilst streaming it is fine, the game itself has it's own quirks that will take time to get used to. the one that annoyed me throughout the video was the control scheme. i feel like i never truly mastered it. the focus is on the R1 and L1 buttons and using them in combination and it's just something i've not really done in games. the other thing i mention a few times is how our weapon feels so weak right from the beginning. Hopefully i'll get more familiar with it in part 2, but for now this does make it more difficult whether or not to recommend the game 'cause on one hand it's game design means it's a great choice to stream but on the other hand it's gameplay feels lacking.
